Peace and Justice Post

Today is the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Though most Americans are unaware of the fact, increasing numbers of historians now recognize the United States did not need to use the atomic bomb to end the war against Japan in 1945. Moreover, this essential judgment was expressed by the vast majority of top American military leaders in all three services in the years after the war ended: Army, Navy and Army Air Force. Nor was this the judgment of “liberals,” as is sometimes thought today. In fact, leading conservatives were far more outspoken in challenging the decision as unjustified and immoral than American liberals in the years following World War II.

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by former Ambassador Craig Murray,  August 5, 2011

I was sacked for opposing – within the Foreign Office – a secret UK government policy of cooperation with torture. Not only was I sacked, I was charged with eighteen reputation wrecking allegations, ranging from sexual blackmail through financial impropriety to alcoholism, of all of which I was eventually cleared. Throughout this process and still today, the Government claimed I was lying about the policy of collaboration with torture.

They never denied any of the detail of my evidence, but rather attacked my “credibility”, which aided by the corrupt press/media nexus was sufficient to keep my information out of the mainstream.

Now the Guardian has irrefutable evidence that what I said is true, and there was indeed a secret policy of torture which implicates the top of the British political, diplomatic and intelligence establishments. Simon Jenkins nailed the extent of this a year ago, although I think I am entitled to point out there was at least one senior UK civil servant who actively tried to stand against it – me.

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Greg Mitchell, The Nation, Aug. 3, 2011

In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan sixty-six years ago this week, and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppressionof all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. This included vivid color footage shot by U.S. military crews and black-and-white Japanese newsreel film.

The public did not see any of the newsreel footage for twenty-five years, and the shocking US military film remained hidden for nearly four decades. While the suppression of nuclear truths stretched over decades, Hiroshima sank into “a kind of hole in human history,” as the writer Mary McCarthy observed. The United States engaged in a costly and dangerous nuclear arms race. Thousands of nuclear warheads remain in the world, often under loose control; the United States retains its “first-strike” nuclear policy; and much of the world is partly or largely dependent on nuclear power plants, which pose their own hazards.

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Anders Breivik’s July 22 Oslo rampage highlighted a problem far greater than him, a topic three previous articles discussed, stopping short of what this article addresses. More on how Europe is affected below.

In America, hardline anti-government groups like the Sovereign Citizen movement highlight how far right America’s shifted since the 1980s. Their adherents (Sovereigns) believe they alone should decide what laws to obey or ignore, not elected officials, judges, juries or law enforcement bodies.

They also oppose paying taxes, promote racial hate, attract white supremacists, and resort to violence to assert their will. In addition, they subscribe to other extremist views, advocating a subculture run exclusively by their rules. Without central leadership, it’s impossible to know their size, though it’s believed to be many thousands.

America’s Militia movement is also politically significant, paramilitaries against government restricting their rights, especially to bear arms. It represents an outgrowth of independent survivalist, anti-tax, and other right-wing Patriot movement subculture groups, believing government is hostile to their sovereignty.

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President Barack Obama talks with staff during a Domestic Policy Council meeting in the Oval Office, July 28, 2011. (Photo: Pete Souza / White House)

By gollies, America’s workaday majority of middle-class and poor people have a fighter on our side in Washington. Unfortunately, that fighter is Barack Obama.

On Sunday, he waved his white hankie of surrender in the debt ceiling battle, agreeing to a disastrous deal ruthlessly pushed by the loopiest of the tea party extremists in the Republican House. It slashes some nearly $1 trillion from national programs that ordinary Americans count on,

puts Social Security and Medicare at risk, and promises to make our depressed economy, and even the deficit, worse.

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The Pentagon’s New Power Elite

By Nick Turse, TomDispatch.com, Aug. 3, 2011

Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission.  Now, say that 70 times and you’re done… for the day.  Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world’s countries.  This new Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed, until now.

After a U.S. Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden’s chest and another in his head, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the American military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight.  It was atypical.  While it’s well known that U.S. Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it’s increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has remained deeply in the shadows.

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Where did the Federal Reserve get $16.1 trillion to lend? The Fed created it out of thin air with a stroke of a computer entry.

by Paul Craig Roberts, Foreign  Policy Journal, August 3, 2011

The United States Government and its presstitute media have wasted time and energy creating hysteria over a non-existent “debt ceiling crisis.”

After reading the “news” in the Ministry of Propaganda and witnessing the stupidity of the US government, the rest of the world is struck dumbfounded by the immaturity of the “world’s only superpower.”

What kind of superpower is it, the world wonders, that is willing to go to the eleventh hour to convince the world, which holds its banking reserves in US Treasury debt, that the US government will default on the debt?

Every country in the world now worries about the judgment and sanity of the country with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

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Tags: barack obama, gallup survey, protestant christians

New data from polling firm Gallup shows that out of all the religious groups in the U.S., Muslims are most likely to reject violence, followed by the non-religious atheists and agnostics.

Through interviews with 2,482 Americans, Gallup found that 78 percent of Muslims believe violence which kills civilians is never justified, whereas just 38 percent of Protestant Christians and 39 percent of Catholics agreed with that sentiment. Fifty-six percent of atheists answered similarly.

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By Hiyam Noir, MWC News, Aug 2, 2011

Was Israel behind the assassination of the young Iranian academic Dariush Rezaeinejad? On July 23, the 35 year old elite – researcher Rezaienejad, died after being shot in the throat, in front of his wife and daughter outside his daughter’s kindergarten in the eastern parts of Tehran. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack .

On November 29,2010, in separate locations in Tehran, two other Iranian academics were targeted by unidentified terrorists.

Explosives were attached to vehicles of Professor Fereydoun Abbasi and Dr.Majid Shahriari. Shahriari was  killed immediately,while Abbasi and his wife survived with injuries.

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Violence in the key Syrian city of Hama continued apace on Wednesday, with another 45 civilian protesters slain as military forces captured the town center, and the four day toll of the massacres in the city exceeded 200.

Reports from protesters said that the vast majority of those slain today were killed by machine gun fire, which has been reported firing randomly into crowds. Five of those killed today, however, apparently were killed while trying to flee the city.

Hama has been the site of some of the largest protests against the Assad regime, with hundreds of thousands marching in the city on some days. The site of those protests was the Orontes Square, which the military seized today.

Though the Assad government has repeatedly resorted to killings in the face of these protests, it has been extremely counterproductive so far, with the largest marches coming in response to violent crackdowns. With the Hama massacres among the most violent yet, what follows may be much, much bigger.